Gavin DeGraw and Dierks Bentley will perform at the pregame festivities at the University of Phoenix Stadium. DeGraw and Bentley will perform at the tailgate party, and most of their performances will air on NBC‘s pregame show. The Verizon Super Bowl Central activities started yesterday, and they will conclude on February 1st. Walk the Moon and The Roots will headline music events at the Pepsi Hyped for Halftime Stage. Walk the Moon will perform tomorrow night, and The Roots will perform the following night. Idina Menzel and John Legend will also perform at the Super Bowl pregame festivities. Menzel will perform the National Anthem, and Legend will perform “America the Beautiful.”
For the first time ever, Coachella’s Neon Carnival party will make its presence at the Super Bowl festivities as well. Katy Perry will headline this year’s halftime show, and Lenny Kravitz will be Perry’s special guest performer. Perry is expected to perform her biggest hits including “Roar,” “Firework,” and “California Gurls.” The twelve minutes of allotted time for the halftime performance takes months to plan, and sometimes, a few months isn’t enough time. Ricky Kirshner, executive producer of the Super Bowl halftime show, talked to the media about the many things that go wrong doing the halftime performances. “When these [halftime] shows end, I can tell you five things that go wrong every year but most people don’t know it,” Kirshner said.
Ricky Kirshner has been producing the Super Bowl halftime show for about eight years. He said unpredictable issues happen all the time including “inclement weather and cables coming loose.” This year, the Super Bowl is expecting more than 100 million viewers during Perry and Kravitz’s halftime performance. Kirshner would not offer any specific details regarding the pop singer’s performance, but he did say the way Perry will get on and off stage has never been seen before during a halftime show. Hamish Hamilton, television director for the show, said Perry’s performance will be a “never-before-seen experience.” “Katy does reinvent herself. The music track is completely different, the staging elements are different. This is a brand new soundtrack and a brand new collaboration,” Hamilton explained. Super Bowl XLIX will air on NBC on February 1st.